'Pay attention and just do it, por favor. And one more thing.' He consciously kept from swearing or demanding. Bauhaus could probably have people snuffed, too… only up here it was done differently.
'What else do you need, Cruz?' Not kiddo. Cruz was treading a line, yessir. Careful; don't judge a dweeb by the flash of his plaid.
'You want me to handle this much blow, I think I'd better have a piece.'
'I presume you mean a gun, son, and not a piece like you already asked for, to wit, a twit.' Bauhaus had regained some of his ho-ho. 'A gun. Lapistola. Yes?'
Cruz decided to push it one more notch. 'Anything nine-mike-mike not made in America, preferably with better than a mickeymouse eight-round clip.'
Bauhaus harrumphed. 'I'll call Marko. Yo, homeboy!'
Cruz wanted to start smashing the receiver against the wall, imagining both to be Bauhaus' cranium. The coke tipped him over.
'Do you read me? And a party girl. She'd better not have any exotic infections whose names are, like, acronyms, you dig what I'm saying? Don't smoke me and don't pull my dick. Otherwise you can pound your stash up your loading dock with a mallet!'
'Chill out, kiddo. Cool it off. Freeze it.'
'And don't call me kiddo.'
A moment of measured silence. Then: 'No hard feelings, right? Right. Okay. Got it all jotted down on Chari 's butt. Girl. Gun. PDQ. Now, if you're ready to listen, Mister Cruz, I'll give you the whens and wheres.'
'Yeah. Sorry. It's just…'
What was it? Frustration, mostly at the quick flee and the alien digs. Anger at giving up Rosie for Bauhaus. Irritation at the Oakwood High dips. The decaying orbit of life in general. How could he put this into words for someone like Bauhaus?
'Forget it, Cruz. This place is getting to you and you need a little R&R. My specialty. You hear me? First aid is on the way, troops. Now write this down…'
Cruz dutifully recorded vital stats and hung up without amenities. He bundled the sniffproof package of cocaine into his battle jacket and prepared to meet the night again. It would take all of the beer in his fridge, probably, just to get to sleep and he did not feel much like drinking alone.
Enough of the mystery woman's new footprints remained in the snow for Cruz to trace her to one of the houses bunched together on the east side of Kentmore, half a block past a side street actually named Kenilworth. Perhaps, he thought, the backside of Kenilworth Arms actually reaches to the next block; the building was so sprawled it was difficult to tell. The trail of rapidly filling depressions led to a skinny two-story place with an ornate porch and unshovelled driveway. No car. Maybe there was a garage backed onto the alley. Etched cameo glass distinguished the front door, which was sheltered from gale force by an uglier and more functional storm door. Cruz estimated that if he squashed his face against his Kentmore window, he might just be able to see part of her front yard. The windows above him were all dark. To home and to bed.
He could hear himself breathing, his body laboring against dehydration in the cold; felt his breath leave him in unraveling clouds. He thought of his hands, warming the hemispheres of her ass. He wondered if the hair on her pussy was as curly, as black.
Time for another jolt, nasally speaking. To keep the pornographic movie in his head unreeling headlong toward the Good Stuff, which starred Flagpole Cruz penetrating every orifice into which he might conceivably fit. Oh god, Bauhaus had fucking well better not nod off before making the right phone calls…
Back at the Garrison Street door he kicked snow from his boots and hit the stairs. Halfway up he nearly collided with someone headed down at twice his speed.
Cruz was lugging enough nose candy to make him instantly reactionary. He sprang back a step to cut himself some striking room. The last toot had timed him tight.
The guy on the stairs jerked backward, flinching. He did not drop the Del Monte cardboard box he had in both hands. He was wearing thick gloves in yellow leather - trucker's gloves, thought Cruz, the kind with the red balls on the wrist fasteners. A knit cap was sleeved down to the guy's eyebrows. He wore an off-green parka, hood down. It had a lot of zippers and pockets, like a space suit. The big floppy hood was fringed with some land of genuine fur. It looked really warm.
Cruz let his fists open slowly. The guy three steps up relaxed, not panicked, just startled. The time for attack had rushed past.
'Whoa. Me friendly.' His green eyes seemed mildly inquisitive, not frightened, almost disinterested. Preoccupied. He held his position, aware he was blocking the stairwell.
'Sorry,' said Cruz, his hands still up in supplication. 'It's late, you know?'
The stranger nodded.
In the box, Cruz could see the tops of manila file folders. A lot of paper. He dismissed the guy as a burglar. 'You uh moving in?'
'Yeah. You could say that.' The green eyes examined the planes of Cruz's dark, now-moustacheless face. Perhaps searching for an attack breach.
'Kinda late.'
'I like being unobtrusive,' the guy said. 'I just couldn't resist freezing my nards off in return for a fabulous view of everything buried in snow. Or, I'm just the slowest and most methodical home invader in Chicago. I've never been caught because I put stuff in instead of stealing it.' His eyebrows went up and he shrugged. Sense of humor… or not?
Cruz decided to stop being such a dick. 'Like Santy Claus.' Every tenant was a potential customer, he thought. This guy looked jumpy enough to perhaps crave an occasional piece of the Rock. 'Moving in, huh?'
'Yep. 207, that's me.'
'You're right under me. 307. If I party too loud, just come on up and join in.'
'I'll remember that.' He shifted the box weight to his opposite hand.
'You get the tour? Meet Fergus, all that good jive?'
'Oh yeah.' The newcomer's lip curled, exposing incisors. He rolled his eyes. 'Pretty scary. I was thinking maybe that guy is dead and he preserves his body from decay with all that cologne.'
Cruz grinned. 'Only it don't work so good. I'm Cruz.'
'Jonathan. Meetcha.'
Cruz screwed his face funny, as though unused to people having names so long or highborn-sounding. John-a-thon? Feuw, thenk you veddy much. The thought didn't rate more than a half second.
They shook hands, gloves crumping together with that badass saddle noise.
'You need a hand with any of this stuff, Jonathan?'
'Not really; I'm almost done. Noticed the elevator was shot.'
'It's always broke. Forget it. Forget the laundry room, too. It's like a waiting room in Hell.'
Jonathan snorted. 'Only time I could borrow a truck to move my junk was this late; that's another reason I'm creeping in and out right now. You a night worker or something?'
'Sort of. I'm just up late a lot.' He looked at Jonathan's feet and saw Reebok hightops, soaked fully through. Not from around here. 'Lotta books and papers and stuff. You work in an office?'
'Sort of.' He'd run dry fast. 'Listen, I'd better finish up before I drop. I've got to roll in to work at nine. Who knows, my truck might be buried already, Cruz.'
Cruz watched the green eyes go vague, like green computer type blinking impatiently until data is squirreled into the proper hidey-hole. This Jonathan guy was storing his name.
He backed down the stairs to let Jonathan pass, and dusted the remainder of loose snow off his battle jacket before it could melt and soak in.
If Bauhaus delivered tonight, poor Jonathan might be kept up till sunrise.
'Guess I'll catch you later, then. Jonathan.'
Jonathan nodded one more time, and they went their ways.
Guy probably thinks I'm an idiot, thought Jonathan as he dropped the box into the back of Bash's Toyota truck. While clearing out he'd accidentally taken one of Bash's fileboxes, how comic. Now it had to go home. He needed to make one more trip anyway. Then his move, such as it was, would be finished.
He lifted the last two boxes of this run, mostly goodies purloined from Rapid O'Graphics, and headed back f
or the Garrison Street entrance. Half in jest, he thought to himself that that guy Cruz looked sort of like his idea of a dope dealer.
NINE
Mario Velasquez heard the bad man coming back, and hid.
The biggest event so far in Mario's short life of two years had been his recent promotion from toddler phase to a new frighteningly exhilarating mode of locomotion. Not yet potty trained or articulate beyond urgently loud monosyllables and parroted commands from Mama, Mario tarried in Kenilworth's third-floor corridor, packed into didies, a food-stained T-shirt and miniature track shoes with reflectorized insets on the heels. He was pretty grimy but it was not his mother's fault. Not old enough to read his second hand shirt, which proclaimed I'M A LITTLE STINKER, he nonetheless tried to live by this maxim.
When he heard the tread of boots and voices on the stairs, he made a bubbly whine and retreated to the open door of 314. He never resisted peeking. There was a crack in the doorjamb, so peek he did.
His Papa had called the bad man a chingon but Mario did not retain the word. He saw snow-crusted boots and black clothing. The bad man scanned the hallway in both directions before digging out a set of keys. Mario heard the keys and instantly coveted them more than anything in the world. Safe in his hiding place, he duplicated the motions the bad man made with the keys. So shiny, so gloriously noisy. The lightweight masonite door opening into the hallway made a hollow noise as the bad man bumped around it. As it closed a skinny black cat darted through just in time to keep its tail from getting truncated. The door thunked shut. The cat glanced quickly rearward, hit full stop, and sat to lick itself in case anybody was watching.
Mario immediately forgot the keyring existed and visions of the gato negro consumed the grabbiest portion of his mind.
Usually, when Mario decided a thing should be his and his alone, and he encountered resistance, he gave vent to a shriek that could gasify brain cells. Then charge: Hands in the air, barrel forward, scream until all breath is gone. His signature gallop made the third floor sound as if it housed the largest and most clamorous rats in Oakwood. Whenever Mario was conscious, he ran, and whenever he ran he squealed.
His mother, frustrated at her first son's wanton demolition of the few good family hand-me-downs within reach in their tiny apartment, had finally let Mario run around in the hallway. She admonished him to never go near the stairs, as if he could understand the consequences. The elevator was no danger, ft never worked, and the third floor doors seemed permanently shut. Letting Mario loose was a compromise. He was quiet in general but now she had to monitor him every minute or so to ensure that the reason for his silence was not the brand of infant death she now spent most of her waking hours fearing. Apart from Mario there was Eloisa, and after Eloisa… well, she and her husband had not decided on a name, yet.
Mario knew that Mama was occupied with kitchen duties, the steam industry of bubbling pots and hot skillets. A late meal for Papa, who was soon due home. The meal was not yet ready for Mario to gleefully fling it in all directions. Mama's head poked around the kitchen alcove, saw Mario near the front door where he was supposed to be, and withdrew. Mario watched her. Right on time. Only Mama could perceive the invisible barriers inside of which Mario had been remanded.
All Mario could see or care about was that cat.
He crept beyond the door, into the animal's sightline now. He saw it, he wanted it, so he squealed. It was an uncertain interrogative, not yet pitched to shatter plexiglas. Almost a coo. The cat crouched, unsure of whether a chase was about to commence, unwilling to move if there was no attack. The creature in diapers was not that large, but it emitted weird screechings, and the cat had long ago learned to dodge the questing paws of children.
Mario determined that if the cat of his desire could not be nabbed before Mama did her next forty-five second surveillance, the prize would be lost. The cat would run.
Mario unleashed his forward-ho scream and blasted off, thud-thud-thud.
The cat did not dally. It accelerated claws to carpet, puffs of rotten fiber flying in its wake. Its sleek speed easily aced Mario's clodhopping gait. It zipped around the hallway's western corner.
Gone!
Mario tried to hang a speed turn, but his top-heavy momentum tipped him over and the pursuit cut short with a clonk of impact as he fell, palms slapping the floor, forehead bouncing off the nap. His big brown eyes welled with easy tears. He sucked in a breath destined to be expelled as a shriek of historic volume. Mario fall down.
He hesitated.
One of the icebox doors in the next corridor hung ajar. Generally they were nailed shut, drowned in paint. Mario was used to seeing them closed. He forgot his abraded knees and disposable pain. His plotted caterwaul leaked forth as an upward-curving peal of fiendish delight. He scrabbled to his feet and thundered over to the target. The gato had to be holed up in there. Foolish gato.
'Mario! Mario, donde esta?'
Poop. His cover had already been blown. Mama had no way of knowing that he was just around the next corner. Her next step would be the usual maternal freakout. The next cry of Mario's name was strident.
The gato would be lost in seconds if Mario did not drag it out of its lair. He knew from experience that the tail part was the best when it came to gato dragging. It was sort of like a furry suitcase handle, almost unbreakable. Almost.
His next screech was victorious. He jerked open the bottom-most icebox door. Oho, gotcha furball now you're gonna eat some torment, for running. The gato was not hiding inside.
Marisole Velasquez knew that one of the calculated gambles of motherhood was leaving one child unobserved so that another might be rescued. Baby Eloisa was swaddled on the couch, busily trying to plug a pacifier all the way into her mouth and waving her legs like fat antennae. She would not roll off onto the floor in the few moments it took to collect the wayward Mario. Probably. If she did, the whole building would share the event in a hurry, but in the meantime Mario had once again pulled his jailbreak routine and needed rounding up. Marisole could track her first son like a bloodhound, correctly picking his most likely trajectory, her motherly seventh sense guiding her. She continued calling his name. Her tone would suggest that for mounting a sortie alone he would get his cachetes whacked.
She rushed into the corridor, trailing fulsome cooking smells. Once she was gone little Eloisa made a face and filled her cloth diaper with essence of infant, a double scoop. Eloisa smiled toothlessly at the abrupt burst of warmth. She was happy to keep her mother so busy.
The swell of Marisole's third pregnancy was sufficient to list her weight as she heeled around the west corner. She had to clutch the wall for support. Already she was breathing hard, panting. A voice behind the door of 320 shouted a general order to shut the fuck up out there. Such imperatives rarely came with backup. To Marisole it was the same as street noise, something to be ignored. If construction workers whistled and hooted at you, you paid them no mind. Marisole had not been whistled at in quite a while.
Sweat, mostly from the kitchen, speckled her neck and forehead. She called again, but only the first two syllables of her errant son's name made it into the air before she spotted the single, Mario-sized track shoe. It was lying on its side near one of the disused, flush-mounted icebox doors. The laces were still tied.
Eloisa, back in 314, would begin crying any second now.
Marisole ran to the shoe as best her pendulous belly would permit, and petrified when she saw the blood staining the floor. A wide, wet slide trail had mixed with floor dirt to make thin mud. It began next to the abandoned shoe and swept straight into the icebox door, which hung wide open and was supposed to lead no damned place at all except into a one-by-one cubbyhole lined with sheet metal.
Which it did, Marisole saw.
More blood was pooled on the floor of the tiny box. So much more blood than Mario's birthing had brought.
From the corner, a black cat watched, not very interested, licking itself methodically. Mario was nowhere to be see
n. Worse, he was no longer making any noise.
Marisole heard Eloisa begin screaming back in the apartment; hitching, gulping baby bleats that might signal colic. By then, Marisole was pounding on the door to 320 for help and screaming herself.
Mario's tiny foot was still inside the shoe.
TEN
Jonathan felt dead below the ankles, his gym shoes slushed, his socks saturated and freezing, his toes like cocktail icecubes. Okay, okay, Bash was right, Capra was right; he'd buy some boots. The winter was not going to recede in time to spare his footgear. Okay. I give. Chicago wins this round.
And some paranoias never rinse clear. He decided to lock Bash's box of stuff in the cabin, despite the fact that it was late at night and no passing thief with any sense would be tempted by the boxes of books and junk awaiting the offload. It was snowing, for godsake. The only other person he'd seen for hours had been Cruz, his neighbor to the north.
He did two flights of narrow, angled stairs with his last load of this trip, feet squishing along. This box had the towels. He could use a basin of hot water or the steam heater to thaw out.
Several other boxes were stacked next to the outside door of207. One at a time they would have to be lifted through and placed to the left of the door in a pile. Then he could shut the hallway door, open the other door to 207, and repeat. U-Haul aerobics. Technically, the tiny airlock's other door, the one to his back now, was 205. His neighbor, who had not yet manifested, also had a key to the outside door. It seemed a needless and labyrinthine complication until Jonathan figured out how the older apartment had been subdivided.
His hair was damp. He should've worn the parka hood. He chided himself that he was new to this climate and could make his body sick fast by being too casual. He'd gotten ill enough Texas summers by walking from century-mark heat into a refrigerated supermarket.
The parka had been his father's, long in the closet. This was its first opportunity for practical use. Jonathan wiped his face, shucked the heavy coat, and searched up towels from the box circus.
The Shaft Page 11